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Colorado Woman Aims To Be 'At The Top Of List' For Booster Shot After Suffering Through Breakthrough COVID Case

(CBS4) - Vaccine booster shots will begin to roll out next month for people eight months after their second vaccination. Jenean Tripp will be one person ready as soon as she can.

"Definitely will be right up. I'll be at the top of the list," she said.

Tripp is recovering from a bout with COVID-19 she believes she acquired on a four day trip to Atlanta to attend a conference in late July.

Vaccinated early this year, she had been letting her guard down when it came to potential exposure to SARS-Co-V2. She went to the conference with her daughter who is a surgeon.

"We were there with 12,000 people there were a lot of people there were no mask requirements," said Jenean.

While they complied with current requirements, it was stunning to both that Jenean started feeling sick soon after they returned home.

"You know that was eye opening to me," said her daughter Dr. Jillian Ciocchetti. "I think I was more surprised in a way that she got fairly sick from it."

Her symptoms went from exhaustion and wanting to sleep, to breathing troubles several days later. Her family took her to an emergency room, where she was put on oxygen and released. Jenean was on oxygen for nine days. She says she was too sick to be scared. But COVID has hit in the family and they were wary.

"We've lost a couple of other family members, through the whole pandemic and one very close person. He chose not to be vaccinated. He was 87."

Her breakthrough case was rough, but Jenean is getting better.

"I do believe that had she not been vaccinated she very likely would have been hospitalized," said her daughter Dr. Ciocchetti.

"I've had some patients that have had breakthrough cases, despite being fully vaccinated," said Dr. David Beuther, a pulmonologist at National Jewish Health, who serves as a professor of medicine and the hospital's chief medical information officer. "They're grateful that they're not in the hospital, because who knows, they could have been without the vaccine."

The spread is complicated by the delta variant.

"Some of these people are losing their sense of smell again or they're having to isolate from family or they feel lousy in and that's just something that doesn't have to happen if we were all vaccinated."

But the unvaccinated are fertile ground for the variant.

"When it infects your nasal pharynx it generates 1,000 times more virus than the virus that we were dealing with six months ago and, and so it gets to be extremely contagious," said Dr. Beuther.

But Beuther thinks the message that vaccinated people can still spread the virus may have been overplayed.

"We don't know that those viral particles are alive, are capable of infecting others, are replicating. And it's one point in time and I would bet that if a vaccinated person had 1,000 pieces of virus and an unvaccinated person had 1000 pieces of virus, the vaccinated person is going to clear that much faster."

For people like Jenean, a booster might do what two previous vaccinations may not have achieved.

"When you have something like rheumatoid arthritis, you might be somebody where you didn't respond as well to the vaccine and you might not be as protected as I am for example. That's where some of these individuals we're going to give them a third dose and really make sure that they're protected."

That also includes people who've had COVID-19.

"Every time your body has a chance to see the virus or parts of it it's a chance for it to boost its immune system," explained Beuther. "Don't let that natural breakthrough infection convince you that it generated the same level of responses. The vaccine does a tremendous job of firing up the troops and making sure you're ready."

Jenean says her doctor has suggested waiting until at least November for a booster.

She's doing better and went out for the first time other than to go to the doctor Wednesday since getting sick.

"I would say it's nothing to fool with," she said about her bout with COVID. It was a life changing experience. "I think that it has (been) in a way because it made me realize that I'm vulnerable."

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